This invention relates generally to the field of loading material onto racks. Specifically, this invention relates to loading sausages, whole-muscle meats such as hams, or other items onto racks for further processing, such as smoking or cooking. The invention will be described as used for sausages, but can be used for any items that are loaded onto a rack.
Sausages are made by filling a casing with a pasty product in a tubular shape. The pasty product is usually a mixture of minced meat and seasonings, but can also be completely or partially made of vegetarian products. The pasty product is conveyed to a filler which pumps the pasty product through a product horn and into a casing. The casing, sometimes made of an edible material such as collagen, can be made in a tubular shape or can be formed into tubes from flat sheets. As the pasty product fills the tubular casing at the end of the product horn, the sausage forms and pushes the tubular casing off the product horn. (Often, the tubular casing is itself wrapped in netting, during the same process.) When the sausage gets to the appropriate length, separators of a double clipper, such as iris gates, clamp the extruded product, apply two clips, and sever in between the two clips. One clip becomes the end of the completed sausage and the other clip becomes the beginning of the next sausage. (A stuffer can be a separate apparatus from the clipper, or both can be part of the same machine.) The sausage is then processed by smoking, cooking, steaming, or other finishing operation. The netting is usually left on the sausage during the finishing operation and may or may not be removed prior to sale to the consumer.
Illustrative processes and devices for making sausages are described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,024,041 to Urban, Process for Filling Tubular Casings and United States Published Patent Application No. 2005/0087075 A1 to Mysker, Apparatus and Method to Net Food Products in Shirred Tubular Casing, the disclosures of both of which are incorporated herein by reference.
As the sausages are produced by, for example, an apparatus as described in the '041 patent or the '075 publication, they are extruded onto a table or onto a conveyor belt. Workers are employed to lift the sausages off the table and place the sausages on a tray of a rack. A rack is a framed device, with numerous trays attached to the frame. Racks are usually about six feet in height, to be able to fit into a standard smokehouse, but can vary between different sausage manufacturer's facilities. Racks are usually on wheels and are pushed on a floor from the sausage-making machine to the smokehouse. Some racks are suspended from overhead rails. Once a worker has filled up every tray of a rack with newly-made sausages, the rack is moved into a smokehouse for finishing.
Problems arise in this method of manufacture of sausages. Sausages are raw when initially made and not particularly stiff at that time. Accordingly, it is difficult for a worker to keep a sausage completely straight, as a worker who supports a, for example, three-foot-long sausage with two hands will often find the sausage bending or sagging in the middle. Bending and sagging create unsightly blemishes in the collagen casing, displeasing to consumers. Additionally, the manual nature of the operation means some percentage of sausages will be dropped and therefore ruined. The manual nature of the operation also requires quite a bit of stooping and stretching by a worker, as the lowest tray of a rack is just inches off the floor and the highest level is often six feet off the floor.
Automated methods of accomplishing loading of sausages onto a rack are complicated by the orientation of the various parts of a sausage-making system. The discharge of a stuffer/clipper is conventionally about three-feet off the floor and is fixed in height. The trays of a rack range from the lowest rack, just inches off the floor, to the highest rack, often six feet off the floor. Accordingly, sausages extruded from the stuffer/clipper have to be lowered, lifted, or moved horizontally, depending on what tray is being filled. Additionally, even within a single sausage-making facility, the sizes and types of racks vary.
Accordingly, a need exists for an automated apparatus and method to load freshly-made sausages directly onto a rack than can be then moved for further processing. A need also exists for an automated rack loader that can be universally used with different sizes and shapes of racks. The present invention meets these needs.